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Feminist Author’s Book Canceled by Publisher After Being Publicly Debunked to Her Face

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has canceled the U.S. publication of a feminist author’s book about gay persecution, months after it was largely debunked during a live radio interview. 

In “Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love,” Naomi Wolf chronicled “how a single English law in 1857” helped stigmatize and criminalize gay relationships, according to the Amazon description.

During a May interview with BBC host Matthew Sweet, Wolf said she found evidence of “several dozen executions” of men accused of having sex with other men. But Sweet pointed out that Wolf was misunderstanding the legal term “death recorded,” explaining that it actually meant the men had been pardoned.

“It was a category that was created in 1823 that allowed judges to abstain from pronouncing a sentence of death on any capital convict whom they considered to be a fit subject for pardon,” he told her. “I don’t think any of the executions you’ve identified here actually happened.”

After a pause, Wolf, who has a doctorate in English literature, responded, “Well, that’s a really important thing to investigate.”

Sweet also said that all the cases Wolf wrongly cited as executions appeared to be cases of nonconsensual gay sex.

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